One of the things I honestly love about the summer is being able to grow fresh vegetables and herbs in my garden.  Growing up, my family always did a garden.  It becomes something you learn to enjoy, and when you skip a year, you really do feel as if something is missing.  The thing is, once harvest time comes, and your garden is producing at its peak, you are left with a lot of extra vegetables and fruit that you’re not so sure what to do with.  Even after hooking up the neighbors, family, and friends with your “overstock” you still find yourself with a excess of whole organic produce – not cheap in the grocery store, either. Here is a very simple tomato cucumber salad I love to make.  The hardest part is chopping up the ingredients.  Even if you don’t grow your own garden, you can easily grab these ingredients from your local supermarket. The crispy fresh cucumbers, the fresh vine-ripened garden tomatoes, and the basil intermingle into an amazingly flavorful combination.

Easy Tomato Cucumber Salad Recipe:

- 1 Large cucumber, or 2-3 Small

- Pint of grape tomatoes, or your favorite variety

- Dash of red wine vinegar

- Dash of white vinegar

- Dash of EVOO or regular olive oil

- 1 Tablespoon of sugar, or to taste

- freshly chopped Italian Basil leaves

- Cracked peppercorn, or ground black pepper to taste

Combine all of the chopped ingredients into a bowl.  You can slice them whatever style you’d like.  Add all of the dressing ingredients, toss them thoroughly, and then let them marinate together in a large bowl for at least a few hours.  Serve chilled, and enjoy!

The longer this salad marinates, the better it tastes.  The sugar takes away the tartness/acidity of the vinegar, so if you slip with the vinegar, you might need to add a bit more sugar. This salad makes a nice side dish to complement any meal.  Feel free to substitute any of the vinegars with your own favorites.

If you need stock images; every high resolution stock photo, illustration, and vector on our website is now on sale! We are not a huge collection, but there are over 7000 high quality images to choose from. If you need, you can stock up on some art elements or photos that you might be able to use in your designs – we’re just running a crazy last minute experimental promotion for kicks and giggles! Horde up some high res stock imagery at this insanely steal of a price while you still can.

Please RT and share this post!

We have all sorts of stock photos: Models, lifestyle, Industrial, sports, Landscape, layout, grunge, Business, graphic, People, background, Diversity, object, education, texture, illustration, Technology, Nature, vector, medical, template, animal, Abstract, Food

Sale ended 1/27/11

Here’s the recipe that serves 3-4 generously:

INGREDIENTS:
- 1 large boneless skinless chicken breast (or 2 if they’re smaller – about 1 pound of chicken)
- A jar of store bought pesto (or make your own homemade with basil, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts… you know the deal)
- 1/2 box (about 1/2 pound) of any pasta of your choice
- olive oil (regular or extra virgin)
- 1/2 cup flour

Optional:
- Pecorino Romano or Parmesan grated cheese
- Squeeze of lemon juice
- Italian seasoning, pepper

Cut up 1 large boneless chicken breast into 1/2 to 3/4 inch strips, or chunks. Not too thin or it will cook too fast and get dried out.

Chop like 4 large cloves of garlic, not too fine. I might even use 6-8 next time, because I really love garlic.

Lightly flour the chicken pieces and throw them in a big frying pan or wok (into a pan filled with a thin layer of olive oil -just enough to coat the pan you can also throw in some seasonings if you want

Start to brown the chicken pieces (cooked it on low medium to medium heat the whole time) I lid the chicken sometimes to make sure its getting good enough heat to cook, in between stirring it around.  In the meantime drop the pasta in the water (spaghetti or linguine works well) as soon as you got all of your chicken cooking.

You’re almost done. Take some tongs, lift the pasta out of the water and over to the big chicken pan. It’s okay if the pasta is a little wet, just make sure you shake most of the water off. Add a few teaspoonfuls of your grocery store jarred PESTO and stir everything – make su

re you even scrape the bits of roasted garlic off the bottom and get it evenly distributed throughout.

Top off with some pecorino romano or some parmesan cheese once it’s plated, and you’re done.

Comments: I really enjoyed this.  The chunks of garlic get a little browned in the oil, and turn sweeter as it roasts in the olive oil with the chicken. This is a very low salt recipe without any butter either – I didn’t think it even needed any more seasoning once you add the grated cheese at the end.  If you like your food salty, season it to taste.  A great meal to go with white wine like pinot grigio and I’d recommend even splashing a spill of white wine in with the chicken before it’s almost done cooking. The flour coating of the chicken pieces is important though too – don’t forget that part – it gives a nice skin on the chicken, a light breading that holds in the flavors into the meat. If yuo want to cut out that step, the dish would still taste fine.  A little squeeze of lemon juice might add to the recipe as well, just use it sparingly or you might turn this dish into chicken piccata without the capers.  Feel free to modify this recipe in any way, because that’s what cooking is all about.

I’m hoping to blog more about different foods and cooking in the future, and better yet, pair them with mouth watering stock photos.

A plate of General Tso’s chicken with broccoli and pork fried rice from the local takeout spot.  This was just the leftovers… otherwise I would have one more piece of broccoli.  This restaurant is a little stingy with the broccoli, but it’s still delicious.  I was way too hungry to shoot the food first.  OM NOM NOM

Getting Organized One of the toughest parts about stock photography is all the organization that goes into planning and properly executing a shoot of any given topic.  It’s a lot of work and effort.  Sure, there are times you might wing it and come up with a nice variety of different themes, but if I find that if I’m always trying to “wing it” my time isn’t used the most effectively.  If you’re going to be shooting models, you need to orchestrate the entire shoot with them.  Then, you need to decide on a location, wardrobe (what to tell them to wear) props, ideas and themes to try.  You want to make the shoot effective for the short amount of time you’ll be working together, for me it’s usually 1-2 hours tops.  Making sure you have your model release ready for them to sign, and not forgetting to have them actually sign them is even a chore.  Then there is the scanning and uploading of the releases to each and every agency you’re submitting those images to.

Shooting Subjects That Can’t Talk BackIf you want to shoot food there is the purchasing of the ingredients, the prep and cooking time, the presentation of it all on the plate and table setting.  Food could sometimes be easier to work with than models, depending on the model.  Sometimes models can decide to cancel last minute, then what do you do with your time slot?  It’s very similar to any other business where you have to make appointments for your clientele, such as dentistry or a beauty salon.  There also is no “extra work” later on when shooting subjects other than people.  You don’t even have to edit the entire shoot unless you want to, and there is no mailing of a disk required.  You save on your time and money shipping a disk out to them.  Maybe you’re not interested in food. Well, maybe you could shoot other objects over white. Please don’t bother with apples, unless it’s done in a truly creative way.  Stock sites’ reviewers have seen enough of those and they’re be extra eager to slap that “reject” button as quick and hard as they possibly can.

Motivation This is the part where you come in. If you can’t get yourself motivated, nothing creative is ever going to happen.  Working from home, and being your own boss, can especially be challenging.  Maybe there isn’t a boss looking over your shoulder, and asking you whether or not you’re going to make the deadline.  You need to make your own deadlines for yourself.  Without having weekly, daily, even hourly goals, your time is going to be wasted.  I’m living it right now – some days I spend way too much time doing social networking on twitter or facebook.  Other days I spend too much time editing older, similar images that probably should have just been backed up and tucked away.  If you are having a rough time staying on task, don’t think you’re the only one.  Stay tuned, as one of my future posts here will address this topic.  There are things you can do to minimize distractions, and stick to your workflow.  Speaking of which, I think it’s time for me to stop blogging and start keywording my images!